Accused of rape by Yanis Marshall, choreographer Bruno Vandelli was accused by five former students of sexual assault, particularly during training.
Bruno Vandelli is the target of new accusations of sexual assault. A big name in the dance world in France, the choreographer has been at the head of a training establishment in Cannes since 2006. But several students or former students of the dance school are now accusing their teacher of having had inappropriate behavior towards them. Among them, dancer and former Star Academy teacher, Yanis Marshall, was one of the first to accuse his former coach of having sexually assaulted him when he was only 14 years old. At the end of January, he filed a complaint against Bruno Vandelli, who was 42 years old at the time, for “aggravated rape” and “corruption of minors”. An investigation has since been opened and entrusted to the Nice judicial police.
Yanis Marshall assured that he was not the choreographer’s only victim. As reported BFMTV, a student from Bruno Vandelli’s Cannes dance school had, in fact, read during an end-of-year show and in front of a large audience a letter in which he denounced the actions of his dance teacher. In a survey published this Thursday, February 29 in The Parisian, new details have been released on these accusations. The young man would have assured that his teacher would have sent him “perverted” text messages and would have “rubbed his penis against him”. His mother filed a complaint against Bruno Vandelli.
The investigation does not stop there since it reveals four new damning testimonies. The accusations are made by four men, three of whom were minors at the time of the denounced facts, the youngest was only 12 years old. Several of them revealed “unequivocal” messages that their former teacher would have sent them when they were still his students. Text messages such as “I would have liked to be your nurse to treat your crotch” or even invitations to join him in his room in the middle of the night. They also denounced touching during training: “At each break, he wanted someone to press him on the back, in fact, to massage him,” said one of the accusers. Bruno Vandelli would have always used the same modus operandi: he surrounded himself with a “court” with his favorite students, always boys, whom he placed in the front line.
Bruno Vandelli denies the facts
Bruno Vandelli defended himself to the Parisian assuring that it was not a question of touching but of an “osteopathy session”. “It’s completely normal, we learn to relax our muscles. It’s part of dancer training,” he explained. Regarding the text messages, he did not admit to having made such comments: “Maybe I was able to tell someone that he was sexy, but I was also able to tell girls. I am not not perfect”.
He also filed a complaint against Yanis Marshall for “defamation” also accusing him of being at the origin of this wave of testimonies against him. The sixty-year-old must be tried on April 17 by the Grasse criminal court for “corruption of a minor”.